Scene I.--MORALITY

Leave things so prostitute, And take th’ Alcaic lute, Or thine own Homer, or Anacreon’s lyre.--_Ben Jonson_.

It was the day of the dance at the Strath. Early in the morning mist rose before the sun, and a hollow silence prevailed upon the hills. Windy sighs followed, and the trees began to shake, and dead leaves scurried along the roads, and the cart-ridges were brimming with black water. At noon dark clouds raced over the valley to the sound of an anapaestic march. Then a deep haze settled, and the atmosphere was heavy with odours of decaying vegetation.

Never had the valley of Thorlund looked more lonely. Early in the afternoon Maude came to the hamlet and found the rector conducting a funeral. He saw her and with the solemn words of the office upon his lips smiled dreamily. She passed on alone into the Strath, without fear, for the place had lost its terror. She could not remember the incidents connected with her first visit; she only understood that she had suffered of late, but the cause of that suffering and its definite nature she had yet to learn. She called herself the same, both outwardly and inwardly, being unwilling to confess that she had changed; although her glass revealed a face where the white predominated over the pink, and her inner vision might have shown a picture, had she cared to contemplate it, of a mind which had been awakened. She went again, and willingly, to the Strath, not dreaming that she too had fallen beneath the influence of the goat-song, to suffer there as one may suffer when a frost-bitten limb is being restored gradually to vitality; but whenever she left the house she believed that this suffering was caused by the troublesome world, and so longed for the Strath where she might be at peace.

A few ordinary preparations had been made for the forthcoming party. The young women had made ready certain delicacies which had been brought from Kingsmore that morning; they had also been occupied over their costumes, and had made themselves masks of silk and lace.

But within the Strath all designs were brought to nothing. Not an article of furniture had been removed from the saloon, the ragged carpet still cumbered the floor, and the impossible harpsichord had not been replaced by any modern instrument of music. Conway was upstairs dreaming, Drayton sat and worked in the ante-room, Nancy Reed sang her old ballads.

Maude entered full of schemes, but when the house had received her she forgot the world and the approaching festivities which she had arranged, and seating herself before the pictures of Hogarth’s Marriage _à la Mode_ wondered why destiny handled her victims so roughly, so like a thoughtless child breaking her toys and flinging them aside.

She heard the moaning of wind, and dead leaves creeping upon the stone floor of the hall. She passed into the room opposite, and stood between the brown masks, which had watched the recluse Biron ruining mind and body with morbid fancies, and the struggles of the unknown family of Branscombe, before the solitude of a century had come to fill their blank eyes with dust.

The wind was strong on that side of the house. Gloom had already settled. She began to long for a companion, not for Flora who lately had drifted from her, but rather for a strong man who might protect her against that terrible depression, or for a child whom she might call her own, that she might show the spirit of the house how willing she was to conform to the dramatic laws. She thought of Peggy vaguely. As for the man whose name she bore, why he, the voice assured her, had grown tired of her insincerity and had found consolation elsewhere. She stood quite alone and a great fear fell upon her. When Dr. Berry entered in his noiseless fashion he discovered her kneeling, white and shivering.

He came and lifted her by the hands. The dim light fell upon his silvered head and invested each feature of his handsome face with a rare softness:

“The summer is over,” he said quietly.

“The wind begins to bite. No more long days to walk and think. The time of imagination has gone. The winter comes when we must work.”

“That poem I read to you,” gasped Maude.

“I told you it was my own, but that was a lie. I copied it, word for word. You have been very much mistaken in me. I am a wicked worthless woman, and have always deceived you.”

The scholar shook his head with a wondering smile, and answered her, “Are we not all foolish, dear sister? We are not the masters of ourselves. He who is wisest among us is but a copyist. We poets sing as the influence directs. The song is not our own, because nothing that we have is ours. The tongue is a loan, and the mind itself but the tenant of a short-lived body. There is truth therefore in your sublime humility. Your verses are copies, and so are mine; but let us console ourselves with the knowledge that to few is given even sufficient power to repeat an old tale well. No, you shall not answer me. No barrier of false humility should be raised between a brother and sister of Mount Parnassus.”

“You will not understand,” she cried. “I have no learning--none at all. I could not even understand the meaning of those lines I read to you.”

“Still upon that strain,” he murmured. “Why then, I must answer you. By your definition I too am false. I am unable to comprehend the great realities which move around us and bend us to their will. I too have no learning, because when I take up that which I have written the finite mind, which has merely suggested the theme, refuses to add an understanding of the meaning. We aim at the clear sky, and find we have only struck the earth. The most inspired poet cannot soar higher than the clouds.”

As he spoke Drayton entered, and standing just within the door asked in a scarcely intelligible voice, “What is the first stage of tragedy according to the classical model?”

“The prologue,” answered the scholar with his head down. “Why do you ask?”

“We propose to give a representation of Comedy in this house to-night,” said Drayton in the same low voice. “I only desire to know the various stages in which tragic destiny moves, so that I may know what to expect. This is the prologue. Well?”

“Followed by the entry of the chorus and the first continuous song,” went on the scholar. “Then the first entry of a principal character followed by the second song, and so on, the entry and song alternating, until all the characters have been introduced. Later comes the tragic dirge, sung between a principal and the chorus; finally the solemn marching out.”

Drayton bent his head, inclining his ear as though to listen for the repetition of some distant sound, and withdrew, muttering to himself. His voice died away into the house, and the wind and the rain made the continuous song.

“I have forgotten why I came,” said Maude, resting her white forehead upon her hand. “I am miserable. I know I have done wrong, and I cannot see how to make amends. I do not even know who it is that I have wronged.”

“You have wronged me a little,” said the voice of the poet.

“I have deceived you. I have made you believe I am good and clever.”

“Cease from this perversity,” he cried. “You have wronged me by not confiding in me, by keeping me at a distance, and in withdrawing, as you have done lately, the light of your learning from my work. Do you not see how we suffer when separated, what peace we enjoy when together? Souls are joined by a look of the eyes and the word exchanged. For a week I have been idle, and you--confess now you too have put aside the pen. See how unprofitable the parting has been.”

“No, no,” she cried. “I have tried to think of my duty.”

“Which is twofold,” he urged. “The duty of song and the duty of love. By neglecting both you have wronged yourself and me. Do you not remember our first meeting on the warm hillside? I worshipped you then as you appeared before me in clinging white, with the fire of poetry in your eyes. My heart sang to you and yours answered. Let our songs be lyrics always. Let us not descend. Be to me now, as then, as you stood in the sun on the side of the hill.”

“What is this?” she murmured, half rising and sinking back.

“It is spiritual love. Perfect love,” the poet whispered.

“Tragic love,” she cried.

The wind came moaning into the house and the dry leaves were whirled about the hall, and after that a door closed with a hollow sound. Both dreamers were awakened. Both saw themselves. What the man saw was a cold empty life spent among books, with eyes on crabbed characters and fingers upon pen, a life which had never tasted the heady wine of passion nor sought after companionship, an unprofitable life of body-starving, of brain-glutting, of groping after communion with unseen powers.

And the woman saw the wasted heartless career of a butterfly, flitting from flower to flower, neglecting all things but pleasure, making no provision for the future. She saw her husband, knowing that he was her husband, bent by work and lined with care, starting from his occupation of business when she spoke scoldingly, and answering with a kindly word; she saw her little daughter playing alone, asking often in the perplexing manner of childhood why her mother never came. This was a part of her punishment. First the Strath had shown her what might have occurred, had she allowed the evil in her to mature fully; now it put before her the simple truth, shedding across it its own sombre light. Still she saw the captured butterfly struggling to escape, and as she looked all its bright plumage was rubbed away, and there escaped a grey little creature, which somehow seemed a more beautiful object than the pink and white beauty which had been held and bruised.

“It is the love of the soul,” a voice said into her ear; and the door fluttered as though with the touch of the eager tragic wind.

“Let me go,” she cried. “It is getting late, and it is dark.”

“You cannot see the light which you shed around,” answered the scholar in rapt tones. “And what is time with us? We are lovers, and for us time and place are of no account. This shall become our brightest day, in spite of the wind and the rain. Beloved, do not tell me you are blind. You have seen in my eyes what I have seen in yours. Together we shall tell the love-tales of the past. And now you shall hear my tale, and I will listen to yours.”

“Mine you know,” she said.

“I would hear it from your lips.”

“You shall,” Maude cried coldly and sternly, rising and standing in the darkened room between the masks. “I know a man whose every action is unselfish, whose only fault is that he loves me. That man has permitted me to drive him as I would. He has repaid my scorn of him by kindliness. When I rejected some plan which he made for my comfort he has immediately taken the blame upon himself.”

“You did not love this man?” he interrupted in his ringing voice.

“I did not.”

“Because his soul could never be in tune with yours. Destiny had never ordained that you and he should meet. The same destiny brought you to me.”

“I have a husband,” she said. “And of him I was speaking.”

“Have you not a soul also? That is mine. Day and night it has spoken to me. You have joined your body to a husband, but your soul you shall join with mine. There is no mystery in that union. The body wedded to a body lives under the cypress. The soul united to its affinity soars above the earth.”

“Once I might have listened to you,” she said.

“You have come out of the darkness, and the first glimpse of the day bewilders you.”

“I know myself,” she replied. “I have wronged you deeply. I have flattered you and led you on with lies. I have made you believe I am a poetess, while I am, as you see me, a very weak and ignorant woman with nothing to my credit that is good. Pardon my wickedness. I will go out of your life to-day, and face my duty, and you shall never be troubled with me again.”

A shudder went through the house as the lyres and flutes of the wind and rain changed from strophe to final antistrophe.

“You and I at discord,” the scholar muttered. “Would you throw your life out of tune and mar the harmony of mine? You may go from me, but you shall not forget me. You will come back to me when I call.”

“You too have neglected your duty,” she said. “You have lived among the dead and forgotten the living. By much study you have lost the body. Wake as I awake, and know that you are still a man treading the stage of life, not a disembodied spirit flying among the hills of Athens or along the valley of Colonus.”

These were strange words from ignorant Maude.

He came and seized her hands. She was cold and he was burning, and both were shivering. There was a light in his eyes which she had not seen there before, and she shrank from the sight, because it seemed to her that the man and the mind were drifting apart. She struggled a little, and as her eyes groped into the gloom she saw the door opening very slowly and noiselessly, and she heard the worm-eaten floor giving beneath foot-steps. Then Juxon walked in, pale and bent, with his hands clasped behind.

How ill he looked, she thought. His clothes were hanging to him loosely, and there was upon his face that grey expression which speaks of midnight sleeplessness coupled with days of anxiety. His eyes appeared to glance between them, passing from one mask to the other. There was the knife, the emblem of tragedy, and this was not the time to don the cap and bells. How, Maude wildly wondered, would the new character play his part? There was no good reason for the doubt. Juxon had maintained a high standard of living; he had not rebelled against the dramatic laws; therefore the frown of the tragic mask was not for him.

Dr. Berry looked round when he beheld a hand upon his sleeve. From his height he looked down upon the man, whom he recognised, neither as the husband of the woman near him, nor as a principal character. “Who are you?” he asked sharply. “What brings you here?”

“A caprice,” said the stockbroker. “Fortune has been hard upon me of late. While I have sat alone during the night a voice has been with me, calling me to the Strath. Is not this the Strath?”

“I do not know,” said the scholar querulously. “Let us have light that I may see you.”

Juxon stepped forward and lighted a candle. Maude saw his agitated face and marked the trembling of his hands. She called him in a low voice, but he did not appear to hear. He lifted his head and faced the scholar who watched him with hard unreasoning eyes.

“I must ask your forgiveness,” said Juxon. “You believe my wife has done you wrong, but I assure you no blame is to be attached to her. What she has done she did unwillingly, indeed upon compulsion. I am the one who has injured you.”

The scholar said nothing. There was vengeance on his face as he looked round the walls for some weapon, with which he might strike the man who stood between him and the desire of his soul.

“You may ask why I should wrong one who has never sought to harm me,” Juxon went on in a steady voice. “Attribute it to the evil which is in all of us, to an inexplicable longing to make a fellow-creature suffer. I have only to confess my sin and clear the character of my wife.”

While he spoke the man was battling with the horrible inclination, which bade him fling himself upon his enemy. He steadied himself by a great effort. All his determination and strength were required. Had he spent in the past an evil life nothing could have saved him then.

“My wife came here to recover her health,” he went on hoarsely. “In her letters she told me of you, describing you as a clever poet, completely enwrapped in yourself and your work. I was brutal enough to ask her if she thought she could lure you sufficiently out of your work to make you admire her, and she replied, yet only in jest you must understand, that she believed it would be possible.”

Maude comprehended her husband’s plan. It was correct. The drama required it. He was sacrificing himself for her.

“In an idle moment I made a wager with a friend, who knew my wife, to the effect that she would succeed in making you believe she possessed knowledge equal to yours. My friend, averring it to be impossible, accepted the wager. I wrote to my wife and entreated her to make the attempt, instructing her to flatter and admire you--in short to make a fool of you--until she had attained my object. I need hardly say she was horrified at the suggestion. She begged me not to press her. The idea was utterly distasteful to her loyal mind. But I refused to spare her. She yielded at last, with what results you know. I won my wager at the cost of my wife’s reputation. I dare not ask you to forgive me. I know it must be impossible for you to feel anything but hatred for so mean a creature as he who stands before you. All that I ask is your forgiveness for my wife.”

Juxon broke off with a gasp. Dr. Berry towered above him, his face malignant, and its features contorted into a horrid semblance of one of the hanging masks. Suddenly he darted forward, and seizing a candlestick hurled it at the stockbroker. Juxon started aside, and as the missile clattered into a corner snatched his wife’s hand and pulled her to the door. The scholar hurled himself against it and the rotten panels shivered into fragments; but the Juxons were gone, into the garden and the wind.